Sunday, March 12, 2023

Part 2 -The Terry Gibbs Dream Band from "Terry Gibbs Good Vibes - A Life in Jazz"

 © Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.


I don’t know if Terry would agree with me, but I always thought that the roots for what eventually became the Monday Night Band at the Village Vanguard lay in Terry’s Dream Band [circa 1959-1962] by way of Gerry Mulligan’s Concert Jazz Band [circa 1960-1963] and, obviously, the Thad Jones - Mel Lewis Big Band [circa 1964 and continuing until Mel’s death in 1990].


Of course, the obvious point of continuity is through Mel, who played in the Dream Band, the CJB, and his own orchestra with Thad, but another connection is through Bob Brookmeyer who wrote arrangements for Terry’s Band, was a frequent visitor at the Dream Band’s performances during its first year and would go on to play a major role in both the Concert Jazz Band and ultimately with the Monday Night Village Vanguard Orchestra [again, through Mel’s involvement].


And as you’ll read in the following excerpt from Terry’s bio, Gerry Mulligan actually led Terry’s aggregation as guest conductor. Gerry was also in Hollywood appearing in films during the formative years of the Dream Band, including one with his then girlfriend, Judy Holiday and both Gerry and Judy heard the Dream Band band on many occasions at the Seville, Summit and Sundown clubs in and around the Sunset Strip.


Stylistically, all three were ensemble bands with a loose, open, fluid phrasing and beat and each shared a common coterie of arrangers including Bill Holman, Al Cohn, Brookmeyer/Mulligan, with Thad’s, of course, the exception as he was the predominant arranger.


Obviously, analogies can only be pushed so far but I think there’s some merit in the influence comparison of Terry’s Dream Band with Jeru’s Concert Jazz Band, the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Big band and the Monday Night Village Vanguard Orchestra.


Here’s Terry with more about The Dream Band from his auto bio - Good Vibes: A Life in Jazz [2003].


“I lured Sid Garris and George Greif to become managers of the band. Besides owning the Gaiety Delicatessen, Sid was also a disc jockey. They used to call him Symphony Sid, just like Symphony Sid Torin in New York. George was a full-time manager. He and Sid also handled people like Jose Feliciano and bought the name the Christy Minstrels and were very successful. They both were very good businessmen.


Major Riddle, who owned the Dunes Hotel in Las Vegas, came into the club, heard the band, and flipped out. At the intermission, he came over to me and said, "I have an opening at the Dunes Hotel next week. I'd like to have your band play there." I told him he'd have to talk to my managers. They got together with Major Riddle, worked out all the details, and the next week we opened at the Dunes.


I called Joe Maini, who was working with Ray Anthony in Las Vegas making five hundred dollars a week, which was a gang of money back then. This must have been around 1962. Joe used to fly back to Los Angeles and work with our band on his night off. He just told Ray he was leaving tomorrow to go to another hotel. He didn't even give Ray any notice.


After paying out commissions, all I had left was enough to pay everybody 200 dollars each, and after I paid Berrel, I made about $11 dollars for myself. The hotel had a big publicity campaign for the opening where they crowned me the "New King of Swing." It was very embarrassing but fun.


I also hired Jimmy Witherspoon to sing with us. The only other singer that ever sang with the band was Irene Kral. Spoon was great, probably one of the best blues singers of all time. He had no arrangements, so what we used to do was, when he sang the blues, I'd have Joe Maini play behind him and the band would make up blues backgrounds, which were probably better than most arrangements anybody could write. Good jazz players can make up a background on the spot and it would sound like it was a written arrangement. One trumpet player makes up a riff, and then the other three guys in the trumpet section would jump in and find harmony parts. Conte would make up most of the riffs in the trumpet section and Frank Rosolino would make them up for the trombone section. When we got to the end of the song, everybody would find a harmony note and I'd cue them in for the last chord.


Mel Lewis really had it hard. He was on staff at ABC and had to fly to Hollywood every day to do a five o'clock show and then fly back to Las Vegas to play with the band. After making the trip every day for four days, I got a call from Mel telling me that they were going into overtime and didn't know whether he could get the next plane and come back in time for the first show. We never had another drummer ever play with the band. I didn't know what to do because not only was he the most important guy in my band, I didn't know any drummers in Las Vegas. Louie Bellson was working with his wife, Pearl Bailey at the Flamingo Hotel so I called him and said, "Louie, I'm in trouble. I'm stuck. Mel Lewis is not going to be here. He may make it for the second show but I don't have a drummer for the first show. Can you recommend somebody?" Louie heard the band many times and loved it. Being one of the nicest people I have ever known, plus a real good friend, Louie cut his part of the show short, had the house drummer play Pearl's act, and then came down and played with my band.


Louie could sight-read anything and as the saying goes, "He could sight-read fly shit." I don't know what his style of drumming would have felt like on the fourth night, because he had a completely different feel than Mel had. But for a one-shot deal, he came in and did a remarkable job. He played the heck out of the ensembles, made all the figures, and saved me from having a nervous breakdown. Everybody in the band stood up and applauded him after we finished the show.


We were breaking it up every night. All the hippest people in town were coming in to hear the band. Our third show was always packed with all the entertainers and showgirls who came there after they did their last show and we tore them up. We finished the two weeks and went back to Los Angeles, a big winner.


Sid and George were trying to book the band on the road and make me a big time bandleader, which I really didn't want. I didn't want to go out with the band and travel, and also, some of the guys wouldn't be able to tour anyhow. They told me, "If you can't get Conte to play, get somebody else," but I said no, I wanted Conte, I wanted Mel Lewis, I wanted all the original guys there. Mel was on staff at ABC and couldn't go out anyhow, and I didn't want to go out without him. But they did book the band at the Avalon Ballroom on Catalina Island. We took most of the guys that went to Las Vegas, including Jimmy Witherspoon. After the second day in Catalina, one of the guys in the band came over to me and said, "Terry, we just tried to draw some money from your manager and he said that we could only draw money on a Friday." I went to George and Sid and said, "Listen, the guys need some money." They said, "Terry, we're running an organization now and the rule is you can only draw on Friday." I said, "I don't run a band that tight and I don't want to lose that loose feeling that we have for each other. You guys are separating me from my band." They said, "That's how it's got to be. Just like all big bands do. It's a business." I said, "You do your business with another band. You're fired and I quit. We're going home after this week." They said, "Wait a minute. What do you mean?" I said, "I told you, I don't run my band like this." We left after the first week and went back to playing the Sundown.


Jimmy Maddin was real happy to see the band back at the Sundown because while we were gone, business had been terrible. Because we were playing for dancing at the Sundown and it was such a big success, I wanted to do a record album that people could dance to. It would still be high powered, but the people who bought the album could not only have fun listening to it, but just like they did in the club, they could also dance to it at home if they felt like it.


I was now dealing with Irv Green, who was the president of Mercury Records. I spoke with him in Chicago and he gave me the okay to get the arrangements written. After I got all the arrangements written and copied, I rehearsed the band and we were ready to record. I called Irv and he told me that he wanted me to record a small band album instead. I said, "But I've gotten all these arrangements written for a big band," but he didn't seem to care. I got bugged. I tried to reason with him but it seemed like I wasn't getting anywhere. So I thought about getting out of my contract with Mercury. I had been with Mercury for ten years and never had any problems before, so I went to the musicians union and told them my story. I asked them if they could help me get out of my contract and they said yes. I just wanted to make sure that the arrangements were paid for. So they wrote Irv Green a letter and told him that Mercury was out of line for what they did and that they had to pay for the arrangements.


In the meantime, I went to Norman Granz, who loved my band, and asked him if he would like to record us. He said yes and I said, "I may have something for you." I called Irv Green and said that since he didn't live up to his word, I wanted out of my contract. He already knew that he'd have to pay for the arrangements so he said, "Well, if I have to pay for them, either send me the scores or send me the music." I sent him the music and kept the scores so that if I ever lost any parts to the music, I could always go back to the score and get copies made. I had the arrangements copied and then called Norman who said, "When do you want to record?" I said, "Tomorrow." I had the arrangements copied, and the next day, we went into a studio and in two days, we finished recording. Irv Green was a partner with Ralph Marterie. When he got my arrangements, he went into a studio and recorded Ralph playing the arrangements that were written for my band. He didn't realize that I had already recorded the arrangements with my band for Norman Granz's Verve label. Our album came out first and Mercury never released Ralph's records. If they had released them, there would have been no comparison in the bands anyhow. The album was called It Might as Well Be Swing,  Volume Two of the Dream Band albums has the same songs on it except that it was live and is called "The Sundown Sessions."


With big bands, you always have personnel changes. Benny Goodman had a lot of changes in his band, but the band that he had with Gene Krupa, Harry James, Lionel Hampton, Ziggy Elman, and Teddy Wilson was considered to be one of the greatest bands of all time. That's what I call a "one timer," because you're lucky that once in your life, you will have a band that's considered to be one of the greatest bands of all time. All of his other bands were good, but that band was a one timer.


Artie Shaw had one when he had Buddy Rich and Tommy Dorsey also had one when he had Buddy. Duke Ellington's bands always stayed the same. Count Basie had two; one when he had Papa Jo Jones playing drums and Lester Young and Herschel Evans playing tenor, and then later on with Joe Williams. Woody Herman also had two: the first and second Herds. I was very honored that the Dream Band was considered to be in that same class as one of the greatest bands of all time.


There was a big contractor in town called Ben Barrett who came to me and said, "Terry, if you let me contract your record dates, I'll get you a lot of studio work." I wasn't interested in studio work. The contracting was done by my baritone player. Jack Schwartz, who was one of my friends. I said, "I have my own contractor." I don't think Ben liked that because once he called my whole trumpet section to do a record date that he was contracting, which would have been on a Tuesday night when the band worked. The guys were making fifteen dollars to play with the band and a record date might have paid them 150 or 200 dollars apiece, which was a lot more money. One of the trumpet players told me that he got a call from Ben Barrett to do a record date on Tuesday night and didn't know what to do because we were playing that night. Then Conte said, "Hey, I got a call also." Then all of them said that they got a call from Ben Barrett. Finally, Al Porcino said, "Listen, it's not my band, but let's make a rule. If anybody takes the night off, whoever takes your place is permanently in the band." Nobody ever took off because nobody wanted to leave.


When we started playing at the Sundown, I had Wally come in again to check out the sound. It wasn't an audition anymore; I just wanted to hear how he'd pick up the band at another club. He came in and recorded the band at the Sundown and gave me the reel-to-reel tapes, which I also kept in my house for twenty-seven years. Those tapes eventually became all of Volume Two and part of Volume Three of the Dream Band records. The other half of Volume Three came from the Seville tapes.


We did a few concerts with Miles Davis when Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane were in his sextet. Every time I worked with the big band, because of my yelling out little signals to the guys, at the end of the night, my voice would be hoarse and I sounded like Miles. After one of the concerts, Miles and I got to talking about when we first met. It was in 1949 and Miles had come into some club I was working at in New York and told me that he had heard Nat Cole's record of the song I wrote called "Peaches." He said he liked the song very much. Then out of left field, he said to me with his weird-sounding voice, "Terry, how come you got no niggers in your band?" I knew he was putting me on, so in my hoarse voice, which almost sounded like him, I said, "Miles, how come you got no JEWS in YOUR band?" Then we laughed and that was the end of that.


The first concert we played was at the Shrine Auditorium. On the end of my solo on "Prelude to a Kiss," I play a little obbligato and Joe Maini was supposed to just turn around, give the band a downbeat and then sit down. Then I would finish my obbligato and cut the band off. Before Joe turned around to face the band, he took his lob out and put it up on the outside of his shirt going up towards his chest with his jacket closed. Joe was very well endowed. When he turned around to give the band the downbeat, he unbuttoned his jacket and half of the band saw what he did. The guys that saw it tried to blow their horns but nothing came out but a "PHHFT" sound and they broke up laughing. The guys that didn't see it played their notes and didn't have the slightest idea why the other guys didn't play their notes and were laughing. Joe sat down as if nothing ever happened.


The next concert was in Tucson. Arizona, and Stu Williamson could not make the job, so I hired Jack Sheldon. This was the first time Jack played with the band. He was really nervous because every guy in that trumpet section was like a god to him, especially Conte Candoli. The concert we played opposite Miles was outdoors in a ballpark. They built a bandstand on the pitcher's mound. It was nighttime and very windy and Jack was sitting at the end of the bandstand. We were in the middle of a song when the wind blew his music off the bandstand. He jumped down and kept playing his part, which was now on the ground. The wind kept blowing the music and Jack kept following it while continuing to play. By the time the band played the last chord, he was out in center field. That's when I found out that Jack marched to his own trumpet player.


Gerry Mulligan used to come into the Sundown practically every week with Judy Holliday to hear the band. After a while, he'd come in with his saxophone around his neck, wanting to play. He didn't want to play any solos: he just wanted to sit next to Jack Nimitz and play the baritone parts with him because he loved the band and the arrangements so much.


After playing at the Sundown for a few months, I got a call from Norman Granz, who asked me if I'd put a big band together and conduct for Ella Fitzgerald at the Apollo Theatre in New York. Ella was one of our frequent visitors to the club and flipped out every time she heard the band. I didn't want to stop the band from working on Tuesday, so I asked Gerry Mulligan if he'd like to front the band on the one Tuesday that I would miss when I went to New York. He was honored that I asked him and immediately accepted.


I called my friend Epstein to contract the band for me and took Mel Lewis with me to play drums. Epstein hired all the musicians I asked for. We had people like Kenny Dorham on trumpet, J.R. Montrose on tenor sax, and some other really good players. We were there for a whole week. Besides Ella, who was the headliner, there was the Oscar Peterson Trio with Ray Brown on bass and Ed Thigpen on drums. Sonny Stitt and Roy Eldridge were also on the show besides my big band. The quartet that played on a few songs for Ella wasn't too shabby either: Ray Bryant on piano, Gus Johnson on drums. Wilfred Middlebrooks on bass, and Herb Ellis on guitar.


It was really a lot of fun conducting for Ella and hanging out with her. She was such a great singer. We had some lengthy discussions about our private lives. She told me about the time she was in Europe with Jazz at the Philharmonic and had strong feelings for Jimmy Gannon, the bass player on the tour. Ella said that when they were in Europe, they got very close, but once they got back to the United States, he fluffed her off and she never saw him again. Then she said something that really made me feel bad for her. 


She said, "You know, Terry? I would give up my voice and all the God-given talent that I have just to be a person who is not famous, so that if some guy wants to take me out, he's taking me out because of who I am and not because I'm Ella Fitzgerald the famous singer." I could tell that she was very hurt about the scene that happened between her and Jimmy Gannon. I think that she probably had that feeling all her life about never being sure if she was being asked out on a date because of who she was rather than what she had to offer as a person.


When the week was over, I got a call from Norman Granz. He said, "Terry, I just got a bill from your contractor for nine dollars and eighty-seven cents." I asked him what it was for and he read the bill to me. "It says here, that on your first show, you went five seconds overtime and he charged me seven cents for the band. On the second show, you were nine seconds over which was eleven cents. Ten seconds, eleven seconds, seven seconds." He broke it down for every show. I broke up and I said to Norman, "That's funny." Norman said, "That's not funny." I said, "Where's your sense of humor, Norman? Epstein's putting you on. Who would charge twenty-two cents for sixteen guys playing five seconds overtime?" He didn't think it was funny.  Norman didn't have a good sense of humor. Epstein scored again.


Jack Sheldon started to get comfortable in the band and would do and say funny things. He knew that so long as he didn't get dirty, that he had the freedom to say anything he wanted. When the guys would start to get up on the bandstand. Jack would go to the mike and introduce them as they sat down. He'd always have something to say that was out and funny and I liked it so I let him do it any time he felt like it.


When I got back from New York and got to the club on Tuesday, I saw a strange face sitting in the trumpet section where Jack normally sat. I asked Berrel where Jack was and he said, "I forgot to tell you. Gerry Mulligan fired Jack." I said, "What do you mean, he fired Jack? Gerry was just subbing for me. It's not his band!"


If anybody knows anything about Jack Sheldon, you know that it's hard to keep him from talking dirty, except with me, because he knows he'd be fired right on the spot if he did. It so happened that when Gerry fronted the band on the Tuesday that I was gone, Jack said something that offended Judy Holliday and she told Gerry to fire him, which he did. I called Jack immediately and he came back that night. I explained the whole thing to the other trumpet player and paid him for the night.


Years later, when Jack became a TV star and even had his own band, he still played in the Dream Band. Jack has his own following, and those people expect Jack to get dirty, but never while he worked in the Dream Band.

Jack and I had a routine going. We were working at Disneyland in the Carnation Ballroom and I always gave Jack a featured spot in my show where I'd have him sing and play three songs. Every time I introduced him, a gang of people would come to the front of the bandstand because they were Jack's fans. Jack would come down from the trumpet section to the front of the stage, and he'd always start his spot by saying, "Ohhhh, it's so nice to be here in Disneyland with Mickey and Minnie Mouse!" While he was saying "Minnie Mouse," I would count off the tempo to the first song so what you'd hear was "Minnie Mouse" and then the band coming in with the introduction to his first song. His regulars always thought I did that to stop Jack from saying something dirty about Mickey and Minnie Mouse. But that wasn't the case. We worked it out that way. I can just imagine what would have happened if I let Jack say what he wanted to say at Disneyland. Fired immediately. Not only Jack, but the whole Dream Band.


I was losing so much money with the band that I was thinking about going back on the road. I really hadn't worked anything but local jobs. In fact, the most money I ever made on one of these jobs was forty dollars as a leader.

Frank Strazzeri worked for me a lot in my little band but he never had any money because he didn't do television or jingles; he just played jazz piano. Frank was one of the truest jazz piano players I ever had in any of my bands. He was also one of the most melodic piano players I ever worked with. I tried to use him a lot on my jazz jobs because he was fun to be around.


Musicians in my band always wore dark suits and I loved putting Frank on. I'd say. "Frank, how long have you had that suit? It's starting to walk by itself; it looks terrible." After about two months of working for me, I got a call from Frank. "Terry, I bought a new dark suit." That made me feel bad because he had no money and here I was putting him on about this whole thing. When he showed up at the job, I made it worse. I said, "Well, why aren't you wearing the new suit tonight?" He said. "I AM wearing it!" I said, "You are? Well, you know what? It's not the suit, it's your body! The suit's good, your body's just weird."


I was getting into debt, so I called Joe Glaser and asked him to get me some work back east. Within a few weeks, he had booked a sixteen-week tour for me to go on the road. I asked Frank Strazzeri to go with me and Frank recommended a drummer called John Terrabaso and a bass player called Don Prell. I had two cars, so on September 9, 1960, we drove from California to Milwaukee where our first job was. ….


After Chicago, we went to Minneapolis; then to Kansas City, Cleveland, Baker's Keyboard in Detroit, and to New York City, where we played Birdland and the Jazz Gallery. Those were all two-week jobs. Those days, you played two weeks at a time in a club. Then we came back to California and went into the Summit.


By that time. Bob Gefaell had bought the Sundown from Jimmy Maddin and renamed it the Summit. We played three or four nights a week with the little group, and two nights a week with the big band. That was the first time that Pat [Moran; whom Terry had hired in Chicago to replace Frank Strazzeri] ever played in the rhythm section of a big band.


Mel Lewis was really bugged with how she comped [accompanied the soloists]. He was used to hearing Lou Levy playing in the rhythm section. Jack Tracy, who was the producer on the album, brought a whole bunch of people connected with Mercury Records in to hear the band, which included Patrice Munsell, a very famous singer.


We played our first set, and I was talking with Jack and Patrice, and Jack was also introducing me to all these other people at Mercury who I had never met before. Mel Lewis ran over to me at the table and said real loud, "IF SHE PLAYS ON THE NEXT SET, I'M NOT PLAYING!" That embarrassed the heck out of me. I pulled him off to the side and said to him, "You know what? You're right. You're NOT playing! GET OUT OF THE CLUB!" He said, "Get out? Who's going to play drums?" I said, "GET OUT! I'M going to play the next set on drums," and actually, physically, pushed him out of the club. I threw him out. Like a little boy, he came back, begging Berrel to tell me to let him come back into the club. He knew he was wrong and apologized. Mel wasn't the classiest guy you ever met, but I think that he and Buddy Rich, who played completely different styles of drums, were the two greatest big band drummers I ever heard.


We finally recorded two live albums from there using the same exact band for both records. Both albums were recorded early in 1961, about six months apart. The first was originally released by Verve Records as The Exciting Terry Gibbs Big Band Recorded Live at the Summit in Hollywood and the second was released by Mercury Records and called Explosion. They were both out of print for about twenty years until Fantasy leased them from Polygram, who owned all the masters, and renamed them "Main Stem" and "The Big Cat." Those eventually became volumes 4 and 5 of the Dream Band albums. As I said before, volumes 1, 2, and 3 came from the audition tapes that Wally recorded at the Seville and the Sundown.

I was never going to put them out. They were just going to be for me and my friends to listen to. Buddy Rich and Shorty Rogers used to come over to my house and listen to the tapes, and indirectly, they were responsible for me putting out the Dream Band CDs because they kept saying, "Let the world hear that band! It's the greatest band in the world!"


To be continued and concluded in Part 3.





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